Hand-knit­ted tribute to Tor­phins war ca­su­al­ties

A mother and daugh­ter have cre­ated a hand-crafted tribute to men lost dur­ing the first and sec­ond world wars.

Tina Thomas and her mother, Ann, spent months knit­ting more than 500 pop­pies in mem­ory of the fallen.

The pop­pies are in­ter­wo­ven on a bridge that leads to Mid Dee­side Church in Tor­phins, Aberdeen­shire.

Af­ter the church’s remembrance ser­vice to­mor­row, at­ten­dees will cross the bridge on their way to the lo­cal war me­mo­rial.

On the me­mo­rial are the 65 names of Tor­phin res­i­dents killed or re­ported miss­ing dur­ing the First World War, and eight names from the Sec­ond World War.

Ms Thomas said: “The orig­i­nal in­spi­ra­tion for the project was see­ing im­ages of the pop­pies at the Tower of Lon­don in 2014 – it was such a poignant tribute.

“I am orig­i­nally from Kent, where my par­ents still live and last year there were knit­ted poppy in­stal­la­tions in Can­ter­bury and sur­round­ing vil­lages which gave me the idea to cre­ate my own tribute in Tor­phins.

“My mother and I started knit­ting pop­pies in April when we de­cided to dec­o­rate the bridge to the church and knit­ted the very last poppy in Oc­to­ber.

“The pop­pies are to mark 100 years since the end of WWI and are a sym­bol of our re­spect for ev­ery­one who fought in the con­flicts, so many killed or in­jured.

“I’m hop­ing the church will let me place the pop­pies in fu­ture years, those fallen shouldn’t just be re­mem­bered on the 100th an­niver­sary.”

Res­i­dent Kristina Foldager saw the pop­pies on her way to a class in the church’s main hall. She said: “I was just bowled over – it’s ab­so­lutely beau­ti­ful. Every part of it is knit­ted, even the green “string.” The work, ef­fort, time, pas­sion and skill that’s been put into this is amaz­ing.”